Murray Urquhart

Murray McNeel Caird Urquhart (24 April 1880 – 12 April 1972), commonly known as Murray Urquhart, was a British painter. His son, Brian Urquhart, would play a significant role in the founding of the United Nations, going on to serve as the United Nations' Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs.^[1][2] He was dubbed “the century’s least successful painter" by his own son.^[3]

Early life[]

Early life[]

Murray McNeel Caird Urquhart was born on 24 April 1880 in Kirkcudbright, Scotland, to Andrew John Urquhart, a surgeon, and Helen Crokat McNeel Urquhart (née Caird), the daughter of Alexander McNeel Caird, the Procurator fiscal of Wigtownshire. Both his parents died soon after his birth, his mother died two weeks after Murray’s birth, and his father died 3 months later.^[4] Following his parents' death, he was initially brought up by his grandparents in Portpatrick, Wigtownshire. He was later taken in by an aunt, Sarah Urquhart, in Edinburgh.

Education[]

Murray initially studied at the Merchiston Castle School, and briefly became a law student, before finally enrolling at the Edinburgh School of Art. In 1903, he subsequently moved on to study at the Slade School of Art, the Westminster School of Art (where he was tutored by artist Walter Sickert), and finally at the Academié Julian in Paris, where he was tutored by J.P. Laurens and stayed for two years.^[5]

Career[]

After graduating, he subsequently began exhibiting his paintings. He exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, the Royal Society of British Artists (later being elected a member), the Royal Hibernian Academy, Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, and the New English Art Club. At the same time as his career as a painter took off, he began working as an illustrator for the children's book publisher in 1907.

In 2013, Murray's son, Brian, wrote in a New York Review of Books article that “Painting took absolute priority in [Urquhart’s] life, and his wife and children—not to mention national events and international disasters—were all secondary. He painted during daylight hours wherever he happened to be. What he did for money remained a mystery, except that we evidently had very little of it and lived in a primitive farm cottage without electricity or running water.”^[6]

Brian also wrote that “The Great War presented a problem for my father, who would do anything to avoid military service. Was he mortally afraid of violent death? Or did he consider that painting was the only thing that he had the right and obligation to do? In any case, his obsession was such that he would hide, take a false name—anything to escape conscription."^[6]

In the early-mid 1930s he and his new wife lived in Kent, and later moved briefly to Kensington, from where he exhibited with the . They then moved to Somerset, where Urquhart became an active member of the , becoming a vice-president in 1944 and later Chairman of the group in 1949. He remained there for several years, but later left, ending up in a nursing home in Alton, Hampshire, by 1972, he died shortly after.

Death[]

He died on 12 April 1972 at Graysholt Nursing Home, Alton, Hampshire, he didn't leave a will. His son Brian noted that “he neglected to make any effort to sell his pictures.” Although many have come up for auction since his death and realized respectable sums.

Personal life[]

In April 1911, in Bridport, Dorset, he married his first wife, Bertha Rendall, a schoolteacher born in Bridport on 14 December 1883, the daughter of Edward Pratt Rendall, a twine manufacturer. Their first child, Andrew, was born in Bridport in April 1914, and their second, Brian, in February 1919.^[3] In 1925, Murray (in the words of Brian Urquhart) “carried his easel and paintbox, rode away on his bicycle and never came home again.” Leaving his wife and two children. Two years later, he married Agatha Muriel Anne Snow, his cousin. Though he never officially divorced Bertha.^[3]

References[]